[desertscape]

what a BEAUTIFUL SHOT

Thanks! It was a very rare event and one of my favorite shots.

[mikeSF]

From Monday morning at Mono Lake, CA

Martian Castle Magic
645Z & DFA 25. stacked

[texandrews]

From Monday morning at Mono Lake, CA

Martian Castle Magic
645Z & DFA 25. stacked

Good place for spacey, alienesque shots! Weird in broad daylight, but the stars underline it.

Real interested in the stack bit....how much stacking? And if more than just 2 shots, formation and stars, how did you manage to see?

[mikeSF]

Good place for spacey, alienesque shots! Weird in broad daylight, but the stars underline it.

Real interested in the stack bit....how much stacking? And if more than just 2 shots, formation and stars, how did you manage to see?

Hey Tex. I finally got around to trying Sequator for the stacking. It allowed me to bring in 10-20 8-sec exposures while freezing a mask of the foreground. I had been manually fitting individual frames in photoshop (warp tool, etc). This worked so much better. These were ISO 10,000 frames, but you'd never know from the noise reduction resulting from median stacking.

[texandrews]

Hey Tex. I finally got around to trying Sequator for the stacking. It allowed me to bring in 10-20 8-sec exposures while freezing a mask of the foreground. I had been manually fitting individual frames in photoshop (warp tool, etc). This worked so much better. These were ISO 10,000 frames, but you'd never know from the noise reduction resulting from median stacking.

Thank you for the tip. I asked because I'm doing museum photography, and most of it so far has been flat work. When it wasn't, I've just shot for deeper dof. But I'm about to up my game to stack at least for studio shots. In the Phase One system that's automated---but I sincerely doubt my museum will be allocating those sorts of funds towards the purchase of such a system. And I sure as heck won't be!!! So, I'm on my own with my Z----and your answer is a big help. A lot of times in the galleries I also have to juggle dof and know it's not perfect by any means---and also a lot of times the galleries are really dark.

[mikeSF]

Thank you for the tip. I asked because I'm doing museum photography, and most of it so far has been flat work. When it wasn't, I've just shot for deeper dof. But I'm about to up my game to stack at least for studio shots. In the Phase One system that's automated---but I sincerely doubt my museum will be allocating those sorts of funds towards the purchase of such a system. And I sure as heck won't be!!! So, I'm on my own with my Z----and your answer is a big help. A lot of times in the galleries I also have to juggle dof and know it's not perfect by any means---and also a lot of times the galleries are really dark.

tex, i may have misunderstood what you were asking. The stacking here was not for DOF, but for blending noisy frames to "average out" the noise. The software i tried is free too. It seems to do what i need better than Deep Sky Stacker and Photoshop, which I have used for same.

[RICHARD L.]

[texandrews]

I think I'd leave the camera home, and bring my Spey and switch rods....

[mikeSF]

another from late Sunday night:

From Tioga Lake
645Z & DFA 25/4

[Ed Hurst]

another from late Sunday night:

From Tioga Lake
645Z & DFA 25/4

Wow, Mike! Just stunning work, as ever!

[pixie]

Wow, what a shot, Mike! How did you get to Tioga? I thought the Park and Hwy 120 were closed during these weird times...

[texandrews]

another from late Sunday night:

From Tioga Lake
645Z & DFA 25/4

Really impressive shot. I'm fascinated that the stars in the lake on occasion show up better than the ones in the sky...

[ivanvernon]

Three iris blossoms from our garden, testing the Pentax 67 100mm f 4.0 macro on the 645Z.

[photoptimist]

Really impressive shot. I'm fascinated that the stars in the lake on occasion show up better than the ones in the sky...

This is caused by having lenses that are too perfect!

As an object in a scene, a star is a perfect pinpoint of light. A high-quality lens can readily image a star as single or a couple of pixels. If the exposure setting is picked to bring out the fainter stars of the sky and milky way, the brightest stars will saturate the pixels and clip. All the bright stars will be the same 100% brightness which means the image loses some of the sense of constellations of varing-brightness stars against a dim star backdrop. (Post processing to bring up the dimmer sky features exacerbates this, too.)

In contrast, the reflected star will inevitably be a bit blurred by micro-motions of the water, cover several pixels of the sensor, and thus register as a range of brighter-bigger and dimmer-smaller features.

(Note: the Kepler space telescope -- SPEX - About Kepler -- intentionally defocused its image to avoid these effects and collect better data.)

[mikeSF]

Wow, Mike! Just stunning work, as ever!

thx Ed. much appreciated!

Wow, what a shot, Mike! How did you get to Tioga? I thought the Park and Hwy 120 were closed during these weird times...

I took 108, Sonora Pass. It's open...even though my GPS was turning me back the entire time, annoying!

Really impressive shot. I'm fascinated that the stars in the lake on occasion show up better than the ones in the sky...

There is heavy processing and some "movie magic" in this image, so...

This is caused by having lenses that are too perfect!

As an object in a scene, a star is a perfect pinpoint of light. A high-quality lens can readily image a star as single or a couple of pixels. If the exposure setting is picked to bring out the fainter stars of the sky and milky way, the brightest stars will saturate the pixels and clip. All the bright stars will be the same 100% brightness which means the image loses some of the sense of constellations of varing-brightness stars against a dim star backdrop. (Post processing to bring up the dimmer sky features exacerbates this, too.)

In contrast, the reflected star will inevitably be a bit blurred by micro-motions of the water, cover several pixels of the sensor, and thus register as a range of brighter-bigger and dimmer-smaller features.

(Note: the Kepler space telescope -- SPEX - About Kepler -- intentionally defocused its image to avoid these effects and collect better data.)

Thanks for explaining this effect. I've often wondered why that happens.